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What Are the Panama Papers? The Panama Papers refer to the 11.5 million leaked encrypted confidential documents that were the property of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The documents were released on April 3, 2016, by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), dubbing them the “Panama Papers.” The document exposed the network of more than 214,000 tax havens involving people

What Is Panic Selling? Panic selling is a widespread selloff of a stock, a sector, or an entire market due to fear, rumor, or overreaction rather than reasoned analysis. Often, panic selling is due to an outside event that is interpreted as a negative signal. This fear causes some investors to overreact and sell. The

What Is an Overcontribution? The term overcontribution refers to any amount that a taxpayer contributes to a tax-deductible retirement plan that exceeds the maximum allowable contribution for a given period. Contribution limits are determined and regularly adjusted by a retirement plan’s registrar or the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Overcontributing to your retirement plan can trigger

What Is Overdraft Protection? Overdraft protection is an optional service that prevents the rejection of charges to a bank account (primarily checks, ATM transactions, debit-card charges) that are in excess of the available funds in the account. Overdraft protection, sometimes called cash-reserve checking, is used most frequently as a cushion for checking accounts, but it also can be applied

What Is Overextension? The term “overextension” refers to a situation in finance in which an individual or corporation has more debt than they can handle and repay. Consumers who must use more than a third of their net income to repay debt are generally considered to be overextended. They may need to consolidate their debts

What Is an Overfunded Pension Plan? An overfunded pension plan is a company retirement plan that has more assets than liabilities. In other words, there is a surplus amount of money needed to cover current and future monthly benefits to retirees. Although accounting standards allow the company to record the surplus as net income, it cannot

What Is Overhead? Overhead refers to the ongoing business expenses not directly attributed to creating a product or service. It is important for budgeting purposes but also for determining how much a company must charge for its products or services to make a profit. In short, overhead is any expense incurred to support the business

What Is the Overhead Rate? The overhead rate is a cost allocated to the production of a product or service. Overhead costs are expenses that are not directly tied to production such as the cost of the corporate office. To allocate overhead costs, an overhead rate is applied to the direct costs tied to production

What Is an Overhead Ratio? An overhead ratio is a measurement of the operating costs of doing business compared to the company’s income. A low overhead ratio indicates that a company is minimizing business expenses that are not directly related to production. The Formula for the Overhead Ratio Is The overhead ratio is arrived at

What Is Overlapping Debt? Overlapping debt refers to the financial obligations of one political jurisdiction that also falls partly on a nearby jurisdiction. Overlapping debt is common in the U.S. because most states are divided into numerous jurisdictions for different tax purposes, such as building a new public school or building a new road. Key